Zurich AI Festival 2026: Where the who’s who of the global AI community meet

Niharika Deshpande
July 3, 2026

From 29 September to 3 October 2026, the Zurich AI Festival will return to the Greater Zurich Area for its second edition. For one week, researchers, business leaders, investors and policymakers will come together to discuss artificial intelligence. But the festival is about more than AI. It is about the bigger questions shaping the future: Who will benefit from the next wave of productivity? Will it create greater prosperity for all? And how competitive is the Greater Zurich Area in a world that is rapidly being reshaped?

The global competition between innovation hubs is dynamic. At a time when geopolitical tensions are driving fragmentation, the Zurich AI Festival takes the opposite approach. Over the course of one week, dozens of events across the region will explore artificial intelligence from every angle. No other place in Europe brings together so many AI-related events within such a compact area – in an economic region that, relative to its population, is arguably home to more AI research and AI companies than any other in the world.

The inaugural edition in 2025 demonstrated the strong demand for such a platform, attracting more than 6,500 participants from 78 countries. Building on that success, the 2026 edition expands its scope to include topics such as climate, global regulation, robotics, healthcare, and finance. Participants who spend the week at the festival will gain a comprehensive understanding of where AI stands today and where it is heading. Participants will also have the opportunity to experience the region’s technology ecosystem first-hand through visits to R&D labs, including Google, Balgrist Campus, and ETH Zurich.

The festival is supported by the City of Zurich, the Canton of Zurich, Zurich Tourism, and its two initiators, the ETH AI Center and Greater Zurich Area Ltd, representing nine member cantons. Its international profile is further strengthened through a strategic collaboration with Choose Europe, an initiative that brings together Europe’s most competitive economic regions to jointly attract international companies and talent. The thinking behind this partnership is straightforward: Europe too often approaches global opportunities individually. The Zurich AI Festival takes the opposite approach – a global festival for innovation and technology, rooted in Europe’s most competitive economic region.

Around 7,000 participants are expected for the 2026 edition. The full program, participating partners, speakers, and further details will be announced in the coming weeks.

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Greater Zurich Area Ltd (GZA) is the official investment promotion agency for the Greater Zurich Area. It is supported by the cantons of Zurich, Zug, Schwyz, Graubünden, Glarus, Schaffhausen, Solothurn, Uri and Ticino, as well as the City of Zurich and the Winterthur region. GZA supports international companies expanding into the region, with a particular focus on future-oriented industries such as AI, life sciences, ICT, robotics, and fintech.